Nopeola. No barracks! Nyet. That's because you can spend the shields on units instead. You can use those units to discourage attackers, beat back attacks more effectively, and go on the attack.

Meanwhile, because all civs expand, at least at the beginning, you end up having to build barracks in over half the cities to be effective. And in the part of the game where they most matter, barracks are much more expensive than units. And you can't use them when you go on offense, which you need to do to win a war. Historically, the biggest barracks were failures.

Even for places like Istanbul, I'd rather spend the effort on naval units or armies than barracks. You don't need no stinking barracks if both sides of it are your lake.

When I stopped building them, back in civ2, my games went much better.

Just think about it! How many times did you get all those shiny promotions and find out you STILL came just short of taking that last city? How many times did you realize, IF ONLY I HAD ONE MORE stinking unit instead of a barracks... I could have captured that city.

NEVER Build Barracks!!

This reminds me of the article about beating difficulties below normal...

The "take their argument, switch one word" as an illustration of how ridiculous their argument is (in other words, a non-argument) seems to be a familiar tactic though :lol:.

It's a good point though. A lot of threads that have long-stood in strategy articles are pretty questionable, from a gaming and effort perspective.

Some of the old/weak threads that make the war academy vs some of the ones here that are better probably does raise some eyebrows. My rookie time wasn't so long ago that I've forgotten how I had to filter through all the nonsense, while still trying to learn the game.

Fortunately, at some are poorly constructed enough that competent (or potentially competent) players realize to steer clear from following their advice immediately.

Nopeola. No buildings! Nyet. That's because you can spend the shields on units instead. You can use those units to discourage attackers, beat back attacks more effectively, and go on the attack.

Meanwhile, because all civs expand, at least at the beginning, you end up having to build buildings in over half the cities to be effective. And in the part of the game where they most matter, buildings are much more expensive than units. And you can't use them when you go on offense, which you need to do to win a war. Historically, the biggest buildings were failures.

Even for places like Istanbul, I'd rather spend the effort on naval units or armies than buildings. You don't need no stinking buildings if both sides of it are your lake.

When I stopped building them, back in civ2, my games went much better.

Just think about it! How many times did you get all those shiny stuff in your cities and find out you STILL came just short of taking that last enemy city? How many times did you realize, IF ONLY I HAD ONE MORE stinking unit instead of a building... I could have captured that city.

NEVER Build Buildings!!

lol @lonewolf. Splendidly stated. Perfect.

I find the "don't build barracks" argument nonsensical. I tend to possess small, highly promoted armies that win simply bcz they possess more promotions. I lose more battles, hence wasting hammers, when my units come out unpromoted. A promotion is usually the difference between winning and losing a battle. Losing battles (bcz your unit is an unskilled doofus) is a greater waste of hammers than building a barracks.

If you couple a barracks with a GG, then your units will possess a significant advantage. New units will emerge with 2 promotions as opposed to one, and it is in those second promotions where the real power can be found. If I'm trying to beat back a large number of barbarian axe or AI axe, then having units that start out with C1 and shock result in less wastage of hammers through battle casualties.

To achieve the same without barracks would require settling 3 GG's, which would then equate to a true travesty of Great General waste. In a war with me, if your military city only possesses 1 GG (without a barracks) and mine possesses 1 GG with a barracks, my 8 double-promoted units will utterly smash your 10 single promoted units. And if you come at me with a stack of totally unpromoted units, then my 8 can defeat 16 of yours, AND I'll have more xp bcz I'm winning at a higher clip and will therefore generate GGs more quickly.

When your unpromoted stack of axemen attack my smaller stack of CG2 archers, I will laugh at you as your casualties mount at an alarming rate while my archers amass xp and continue to advance in promotions . Later, when my small stack of CR2 Swordsmen approach your unpromoted archers, I will again chuckle.

For further insight, consider the following. If you settle 3 GG's in your miltary city (so that you can produce dp units), then I will have 3 cities with GG's and barracks producing dp units, while you possess only 1 and your other cities are fielding axemen with axes made from reeds and tin.

You exaggerate the significance of lost time in building a barracks, you only have to build a barracks once and its effects remain permanent (without needing to upgrade or rebuild the barracks as in previous versions of civ), it's not like you have to rebuild them before every construction of a unit either.

This is just asinine. Better promoted units survive battles at significantly higher rates than unpromoted units. If you're indeed coming out with doofus units, than you'd sure better have a dozen more of them.

At higher difficulty levels, the mantra of "doing more with less" is critical. You must win battles with superior quality, because you will never achieve superior quantity.

If you are bemoaning the fact that you simply needed 1 more unit to complete your conquest, than truly you have simply demonstrated that you were impatient and attacked without possessing sufficient arms to win, and really, you probably would have won if your units had possessed the proper promotions to complete the job.

Creating mixed stacks with mixed promotions is a fine art, and properly achieved will result in staggering dividends.

Please read the never build walls post. Lol. Ok I lolled at this one.

The Snug, you are a prime reason as to why some of the utterly poor trash articles are still indexed around here.... and taken seriously by some.

The Snug, you are a prime reason as to why some of the utterly poor trash articles are still indexed around here.... and taken seriously by some.

Yeah, ok, that's real fine politicking there. Truly convincing arguments that helped me to see the light. Your sagacious wisdom, so cleverly stated, has converted me. Come on, man, try to use an argument rather than resorting to baseless personal retorts. The very fact that you resorted to such an underhanded tactic serves to illustrate the truth that you don't actually possess a real argument.

I would suggest re-reading my post too, I added more detail to it to help clarify the folly of your position.

As to the articles, I wouldn't know, I never read any of them. Experience has been my tutor.

Yeah, ok, that's real fine politicking there. Truly convincing arguments that helped me to see the light. Your sagacious wisdom, so cleverly stated, has converted me. Come on, man, try to use an argument rather than resorting to baseless personal retorts. The very fact that you resorted to such an underhanded tactic serves to illustrate the truth that you don't actually possess a real argument.

I would suggest re-reading my post too, I added more detail to it to help clarify the folly of your position.

As to the articles, I wouldn't know, I never read any of them. Experience has been my tutor.

Actually the OP is more like a word-for-word copy of another non-article that has remained in the strategy articles section for years, swapping nothing but the words "barracks" and "walls".

Although barracks are certainly useful more frequently than walls, the quality of the two articles is identical.

This was considered an article? As was the "walls" version?


Are you insinuating that the OP was simply using sardonic sarcasm in pretense of defending an ideological position, that in truth, he does not actually subscribe to? Sorta like the guy who advocated building the WS in a cottage only city with science at 100% while building wealth and not running any merchants.

I don't know. It's weird. I'm always getting accused of insinuating this or that...:mischief:.

moved to Strategy and Tips

barracks whipping for aggressive civs!

Well, if you are Zulu you may want to build some barracks :p

[/blatant ripoff of other post in a similar thread]

@The Snug...

You completely forgot to mention the increased unit maintenance that he will be paying!

In my games at Emperor I will reach a point where I just cannot afford to build more units... if I keep on doing so my slider will fall even further down through the rex. Units cost gold, but promotions don't. I believe Barrack's is worthwhile if the cities to build 4+ units... before then save the hammers for an extra unit, but the differance between 10 axes or 8/9 + barracks is a massive advantage to the barracks!

Sorta like the guy who advocated building the WS in a cottage only city with science at 100% while building wealth and not running any merchants.

He he. :lol:

Who did that?

Anyway, I think the main point that obsolete is too lazy to reiterate is that by building barracks you often waste valuable time. These high level players have refined their strategies over a long period and I get the impression they have honed in on making the most of an opportunity in as short as possible a time.

For example, if you are going to rush an AI, it may well be better to have 5 unpromoted units and successfully take a new capital city than 3 promoted units and no capital city.

A similar argument is often used against people who like to bombard away defenses. Time is of the essence and while your units sit there bombarding, the enemy whips more defenders and gets more reinforcements from elsewhere. This is used to argue attacking cities either before the city defense is entirely gone (i.e. at worse odds which seems counter-intuitive), or going for a complete alternative and using spies for the revolt instead.

You'll find a similar thing with drafting use, and upgrades. All things where you need to use them almost as soon as they're available or else not at all.

A barracks is a no-brainer in a city that will produce many units, but in a city that is only going to build a few (where do you draw the line? 4 units?) it is not worth it.

In the early game I will build several units before a barracks, because it is often more important to just have a unit than have a well promoted one. This is especially true for city garrison units or the "spawn busters".

Anyway, any arguments in Civ that include the term "NEVER" are usually going to fail. The idea of building no barracks at all will work best in some circumstances but by no means is it a good general pattern to follow.

i wait until the middle ages before i start building barracks, and then only in two or three cities. but i lose a lot, so there you go.

my thinking is that you are building cheap cannon fodder anyway. the difference between a combat 1 warrior or a vanilla warrior is effectively zilch. they both suck. even with C5 it would still suck.

Actually a woodsman I warrior is favored against archers in forests...significantly so with fortification.

But it's not worth it early on. When you're using units to attack, however, it is.

Actually a woodsman I warrior is favored against archers in forests...significantly so with fortification.

But it's not worth it early on. When you're using units to attack, however, it is.

no way. maybe. woodsman gives you +20% and the forest gives you +50% in a forest, plus you get like +10% per turn that you spend fortified. it is pretty close. woodsman 2 yes, woodsman 3 definitely.

better attacking cities if you have good enough units. if you can field city-raider swordsmen, that's like strength 6 with +10% innate and +20% for city attacks. so, maybe there, but you are fighting, 3 strength archers with innate city defense +50% plus cultural defense and possibly walls? is this right, it seems like vanilla stats. i don't know. either way, i think that swords would generally beat archers even without promotions.

also, there is usually a bigger bonus with higher level promotions, so if you are running vassalage or theocracy then barracks make even more sense. so horse archers benefit from them more because with stables you can give them two promotions; flanking 2 HA get like 50% withdrawal odds.

anyways, i think that your main point is if you are attacking and want to win, you will need promotions. otherwise, the defenders will outclass you with terrain bonuses. not to put words in your mouth. but early game i get enough of a terrain bonus when i park warriors on forest-hills and other fortuitous terrains when fog-busting that really only axemen are a threat.

so i guess i do agree.

Actually a woodsman I warrior is favored against archers in forests...significantly so with fortification.

But it's not worth it early on. When you're using units to attack, however, it is.

The usual problem is how healthy warrior is left. it usually is no good to repeat that even if full fortify.

My build order in the capital is uaully worker, warrior, warrior, grow to size 3/4, then settler. After second warrior, when growing to size 3 or 4, I often part build a barracks. Unless I'm agressive it won't be finished by the time I start on the settler (sometimes not even then). But i've put a few turns/hammers into the barracks so it is a waste not to finish it. Therefore a barracks is often the first building in my capital.

Note, if doing a quecha rush I do not build a barracks until i have 9 - 10 quechas out. Point being, a super early rush means a barracks is out for me.

The usual problem is how healthy warrior is left. it usually is no good to repeat that even if full fortify.

You usually don't need more than 1 fight/warrior with the barb spawn rules...

You usually don't need more than 1 fight/warrior with the barb spawn rules...

I have adopted TMIT's spawn bust strategy and, in my experience, warriors on forested hills with WI are usually successful against barb archers. They are almost always able to heal by the time another archer comes along.

I build barracks, at some point to almost every city I got. But then again, I almost never build walls (except the Great Wall), unless I can't think of anything better to build. I don't know if this is smart playstyle or anything, that's just the way it goes with me.

But I do think barracks are more important than walls, though. It may be harder to defend a city without them, but then again it's easier to take it back. Besides, walls get obsolete pretty fast.

He he. :lol:

Who did that?crusher1

@obsolete; are you serious, or is it only a joke on the NEVER Build Walls! thread?

*hand to forehead* ...nice try Obsolete, but it went right over their heads...

My tuppence :-

1. If you build barracks then don't build at least 3 units there you are a noob, unless you expect to be in nationalism civic soon.

2. Build barracks in your HE city - then point 1 applies only more so....

But I do think barracks are more important than walls, though. It may be harder to defend a city without them, but then again it's easier to take it back. Besides, walls get obsolete pretty fast.

Side note - entirely irrelevant to the idea behind this thread: Walls will never survive a city capture, so building them in one of your cities does NOT mean it will be harder to take it back later. What kind of an argument is that anyway, you're not supposed to plan like that. You are going for the win! ;-)

Ok, this thread made me log on and post for the first time in how many years? (I am not posting that much really)

Absolutely brilliant thread!

Thank you obsolete!! Even though you should probably tone down your post a bit to allow more people to see the light...

*hand to forehead* ...nice try Obsolete, but it went right over their heads...

Maybe not. I'd say this post accomplished obsolete's goal quite well. Neither this nor the article upon which it is based are considered articles any longer, and that was probably his point :p.

The difficulty is: who judges? What is the minimum threshold for something to be a strategy article? I can't pretend to be an authority on it and I don't think anyone else truly can either. However, I do believe there is at least some expectations that strategy articles be constructed based on logical considerations that are viable to gameplay...and many aren't.

The difficulty is: who judges? What is the minimum threshold for something to be a strategy article? I can't pretend to be an authority on it and I don't think anyone else truly can either. However, I do believe there is at least some expectations that strategy articles be constructed based on logical considerations that are viable to gameplay...and many aren't.

It's not difficult at all. Obviously it is the moderator of the forum who judges whether an article qualifies for the forum or would be better elsewhere. Members can message him if they feel something is out of place.

Nopeola. No barracks! Nyet. That's because you can spend the shields on units instead. You can use those units to discourage attackers, beat back attacks more effectively, and go on the attack.

Meanwhile, because all civs expand, at least at the beginning, you end up having to build barracks in over half the cities to be effective. And in the part of the game where they most matter, barracks are much more expensive than units. And you can't use them when you go on offense, which you need to do to win a war. Historically, the biggest barracks were failures.

Even for places like Istanbul, I'd rather spend the effort on naval units or armies than barracks. You don't need no stinking barracks if both sides of it are your lake.

When I stopped building them, back in civ2, my games went much better.

Just think about it! How many times did you get all those shiny promotions and find out you STILL came just short of taking that last city? How many times did you realize, IF ONLY I HAD ONE MORE stinking unit instead of a barracks... I could have captured that city.

NEVER Build Barracks!!

Well put.

And think even about this:
Do your settlers get extra xp from a barracks? NO
Do your spies get extra xp? NO
Workers? NO ...
Missionaries? nada,
Corporate Executives at least? Newp


So then at least ALL your military units get 2 xp right?
WRONG!

Barracks only effect land units...
Yep that's right folks, so even after you spend all those :hammers:s on making the friggin barracks all your naval units and aerial units WILL NOT gain any extra experience points towards a promotion.

Conclusion.

BARRACKS ARE A WASTE OF HAMMERS.

generally i use baracks in my main producing cities all situations for axe rushes etc. the only time i dont use them is when im playing Huayna Capac, and am doing a Quechua
rush. in such situations giving 6 or so Quechua before anything else(no worker or settler or anything) can catch the opponent with their pants down, and mean a few cirties/workers stolen from the opponent, and maybe even a nice capital location.

besides the Quechua/warior rush, i would generally opt for investing in baracks for the promotions, as stated, promotions make all the difference in combat. and if they are winning combat they will then also gain more promotions, and next thing you know you have a group of CR3 units which can take down any achers etc of the time before cultural defences go over 20%.

It's not difficult at all. Obviously it is the moderator of the forum who judges whether an article qualifies for the forum or would be better elsewhere. Members can message him if they feel something is out of place.

The mods hold ultimate authority but there are multiple mods and on top of that, they take their duties seriously. Unless there is a set in stone criteria and an objective means of judging it, it's a little hard and I'm virtually certain the opinion of the CFC community as a whole play a part.

This is also weighed against the usefulness of thumbing through old articles to kick them out rather than just letting them die ----> doesn't seem an efficient use of anyone's time.

IMO, however, the war academy could use an update on some of the more recent + strong guides.

Fact- bowmen barracks= double star- one animal or barbarian and cover.
an uber unit in one build

Fact- Second unit, double star and formation. a mini stack in two builds

the evidence is clear. Babylon, Hunting, Archery, Barracks first build. this is the superior

But what if you have to do an early rush against Sitting Bull with chariots? And I do mean HAVE to, or otherwise you could only get out two cities separated by Native Americans before the land runs out, with Augustus Ceasar waiting on the other side. Surely barracks will be a must then?

At some point I'm going to always build barracks in all of my cities that I expect to be producing my land based army. That won't always be right away, but I've never had a hard time fitting in the build either with an early whip/chop or later when I'm pausing between wars to recover. Granted, I'm playing at noble right now and it could be different at higher levels. I finished off a 1352 AD domination win last night having built barracks in all of my cities except the very recently captured. Maybe it slowed me down...but who cares? That's an early enough win for me and a personal record.

You usually don't need more than 1 fight/warrior with the barb spawn rules...

i checked your way of spawnbusting actually [a bit work from screenshots and comments]. It often needs to much warriors to early for my taste, i'd rather squeeze out earlier settler.

Probbaly matter of taste and balancing safety/expansion. As long as warrior gets within chance of second fight he is mostly dead meat and where from WI arises if he was not in fight before?
[I've tried early rax+woodsmen warrior spawning - I'd rather tech archery]

Do not go rax. Get 3-4 warriors out before the era of animals ends (usually ASAP after worker 1st).

Sometimes on immortal you'll have to replace 1-4 warriors if you're really, really unlucky. Other times you won't lose any warriors at all (mostly depends on luck w/ animals actually).

I'm saying this for the worst-case scenario too ---> isolation. For example in each of the past 4-5 Immortal U games I also used warriors exclusively. The only time it got hard was in the Caesar game, but when you get 15+ cities peacefully that is to be expected. Even then, I only lost a couple warriors and had 0 improvements pillaged.

The early fortification to +25% and defensive terrain make a huge difference. Once they're there barbs that spawn will heavily favor the AI since they'll be closer to them.

And another sarcasm thread goes serious .... ;)

i still rather have city spawnbusting for me:lol:.

Problem is not archers. I had situations were axe spawns in the only available tile kills busters and heads toward me.

Worst case is actually starting with someone else who build Great Wall and barbs start swimming towards you damn know from there

You know 4 extra warriors = 1 extra worker afterall... As i said matter of taste. I'd take worker and fight barb later on...

Barracks are worth it if you have a high hammer capital and/or an aggressive leader. Because it's worth it to have if you can build quickly, or whip early on. Not to mention the fact that with an AGG leader, you can have specialized troops very early on (IE shock/cover/medic Axeman and Swordsman) also freeing up your first GG to be attached rather than settled.

However, for a fast rush, holding off on a non-AGG barracks might work out better in the future. I wouldn't say NEVER build barracks. I would say "perhaps hold off on barracks until your initial rush is successful" (which also depends on if a military rush is even necessary).

What's with obsolete talking about "shields?" I thought this was Civilization IV.

:confused: :crazyeye: :confused:

2. Build barracks in your HE city - then point 1 applies only more so....

ORLY? I almost never build a barracks in my HE city. Only when agg leader with stone after I've built the GLH.

I think the other guy made a good point about not building walls. This is just stupid.

Come on peoples, it's idiocy to skip a barracks after building a forge (a must) and while in OR (+25% :hammers:) in your military city. It's like a 4 turn build on Marathon in a decent :hammers: city. So what if every unit you build in that city ONLY gets +3XP (only?? :lol:) until the end of the game. That's only about a ridiculous # of free XP

And another sarcasm thread goes serious .... ;)

So then what's the deal with all of the sarcasm threads lately? Why is civfanatics degenerating to such milieu?

I would say that is the lack of yellow cards, Snug :/

I never build barracks bcz I let the AI capture my out-lying bait cities so that I can take advantage of the partisan event that will give me free units.

LoL. I never switch into slavery to avoid the slave revolt events which totally suck!

LoL. I never switch into slavery to avoid the slave revolt events which totally suck!

Absolutely true to OCC games, though

LoL. I never switch into slavery to avoid the slave revolt events which totally suck!

I actually went through a period of time when this was true for me. :p

Now I avoid it, bcz I believe it is immoral and I can't differentiate a game from real life. Besides, aren't all movies based upon true stories?

I would say that is the lack of yellow cards, Snug :/

which could be changed :evil:

this thread is dangerously close to being closed as a spam thread

Eh, go ahead and pull the trigger. The thread exists only to mock another poster anyway. It's pointless and somewhat mean.

Ok, this thread made me log on and post for the first time in how many years? (I am not posting that much really)

Absolutely brilliant thread!

Thank you obsolete!! Even though you should probably tone down your post a bit to allow more people to see the light...

Thanks for the support, but I have to confess, I plagiarized this from the war-academy/strategy papers thingy, if you can believe it...

actually I used to never build buildings in civ1 because they cost gold- maintenance was charged per improvement back in civ1 and 2, not city size or count, and I wanted to run max science all the time. Of course I was 8 and playing the game with no instruction manual and soon figured out buildings are good.

Darn. Almost ALWAYS build barracks (and walls). If only I knew I shouldn't...:mischief:

I think this is a joke thread from the thread "Never Build Walls", which I believe was a ridiculous statement. What's the next joke threat going to look like? "Never Build Workers"? I dare somebody to make a thread out of that!

Surely the point of this thread has been made. Though it seems as if some are still missing the point.

:deadhorse:

:deadhorse:
:yup:

Thread closed - its only spam by now anyway...